Jim: This is iWork4Him.
Martha: Where faith meets work, and believers unleash their calling.
Martha: You say tomato, I say tomato. You say potato, I say potato. You say it's partly cloudy, I say it's partly sunny. You call me an elephant, and I say thank you. You say the dress is black and blue, and I say it's white and gold. Who is right and who is wrong? It's really not a matter of right and wrong, it's a matter of perspective.
Martha: And today, my friend and fellow elephant, Kimberly Wright, is here to give us some of the concept of her latest book by that title, Perspective: Narrowing the Gap Between Your Perceptions and God's Truth.
Martha: Kimberly Wright, welcome to the show.
Kimberly Wright: Thank you. Thank you both. I'm just thrilled and honored to get to be here. I love your show so much.
Martha: Oh thank you, and we are thrilled to have you here as well. And I am sure that I started a lot of questioning in the things that I said at the beginning, and I can't wait to dive into it.
Jim: I'm just thinking you got away with calling your friend an elephant.
Martha: And that is the beautiful thing. We even have necklaces to prove it. I forgot to wear mine today, but- we should have it on.
Jim: Quick, let's restart the show ...
Martha: No. You have been a guest on the, the sheWorks4Him podcast in the past, and I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for everybody to go back and hear that. But I want you to let our listeners know a little bit about yourself and why you care so deeply about Christian working women.
Kimberly Wright: I - again, thank you for having me. This is such an honor. I, usually I start with the fact that I'm a Jesus girl through and through. And then I start with my family. So it's weird when somebody asks me about myself, that's where I go, but that's just the, my greatest joy and delight. On September 28th, I've been married 30 years, and so that's a great little benchmark that we've made. Thank you.
Kimberly Wright: And then we have four adult kids. One girl, she's the youngest, and three boys and ages 20 to 26. And, it's, every season of life that they've been in has been my favorite. They're just great people, and I'm so proud of them, and just a lot of fun. But then, that's always my first and foremost, but I, like you said, I'm a speaker and an author, and I also love working with female Christian business owners.
Kimberly Wright: And then I also work with teams in the marketplace to help help them understand how their perceptions drive behavior, impact culture, communication, and so forth.
Martha: Awesome. So what specifically do you think led you to talking to Christian working women? Where's your heart about that?
Kimberly Wright: I guess because I have always been one and longed to be one. And I grew up in church, and very much love the church, little C, big C, both, even with all of our human flaws within the church I just always loved it so much. But I've led Bible studies for, gosh, 15-plus years, and I would continue to hear the same thing from women who worked during the day, how lonely they felt in their own church or how they felt guilty for having ambition or having to work.
Kimberly Wright: Maybe they were a single mom and they felt like they were left out because the stay-at-home moms would volunteer during the days and serve meals for funerals, and they would clean the nursery and do all those things. And the working moms, they just... They felt bad. "I don't have a place here. I don't know where I fit."
Kimberly Wright: And I understood that tension so much of, "Lord, why am I not satisfied? And I have four great kids, and I have a great husband, and I'm so blessed. And, why do I want more?" And it took me a lot of years to figure out God wired me this way for a purpose and for His glory, and it wasn't an accident, and I'm not defective. And so I just love and understand some of that tension that Christian women who have big goals go through.
Martha: That's so good. And so I think this is a really good place for me to explain why I called you my elephant.
Jim: I was gonna say, yeah, there's an elephant in the room that still hasn't been addressed.
Martha: There is an elephant in the room. So we... Several years ago for Christmas, my sister sent me an ornament of an elephant with a poem that talked about the nature of the female elephant and how she protects the other elephants, especially when they're in a moment of vulnerability. So if they're wounded if one is stranded, whatever, they will actually circle the vulnerable elephant, stomp up the dirt distract the prey, distract whatever might be coming around them, and protect that elephant.
Martha: And so through the course of Kimberly and I getting to know each other, she has become that for me. And I don't know, about a year and a half or so ago, I found some elephant necklaces and gave it to a couple of my elephants, explained it to all of the women in our Faith & Work for Women group of female leaders, that we spend time together praying for each other, and it's that safe place.
Martha: And just knowing when you're surrounded by elephants, I've never been wanted to be called an elephant before and neither has any other woman on the face of the earth. But in this context, it is not only a compliment but a privilege. And so I am so grateful for that in Kimberly in my life. I know that I'm on her prayer list. I pray for her. I'm grateful for the, the, the work that she is doing and seeing that drawn out of her in every way.
Martha: So that is why I call Kimberly one of my elephants. It is a compliment, and for anybody that was like, "You can't say that to a friend, especially a woman," yes, you can. And it's very meaningful.
Kimberly Wright: It's an honor for ... and likewise. You and I especially, in the beginning when I started being a part of the Faith at Work, I was at really a lowest of low. And it was your prayers and your encouragement and your calls that really kinda kept me going through that whole year of just healing and stuff. So I'm so grateful for my elephants.
Martha: That's good. That's so good.
Jim: Do you guys mind if I jump in here for a minute?
Martha: No, you got something to say, Jim?
Jim: I feel like we're on a safari. That's right. Kimberly, when you were little, what did you think life would look like for grown-up Kimberly? Does it look the same as what you expected?
Kimberly Wright: It's funny because I, from the time I was five or six, I was gonna be an attorney, and I think I was gonna be an attorney for mostly the wrong reasons.
Jim: Money, fame. The great outfits.
Kimberly Wright: I lived in a very small town and my mom would talk about the attorneys, with such admiration of things that they had done or how important they were in the community and so forth, and it was a tiny community. And so I correlated that with success and admiration, and so I never considered something else really.
Kimberly Wright: And so I always knew I was gonna be working, but then I also, on the other hand, I wanted a big family. I was an only child. I had divorced parents, and I moved around a lot, and so I was like, "I wanna have a big family full of loud chaos," and just having that safe haven and that home filled with love and laughter.
Kimberly Wright: So I have no idea. I didn't connect dots back then. I just knew they both had to exist. But when it came time to take the LSAT in college, I did not become an attorney. I chickened out. So yeah.
Martha: Oh, that's awesome. Okay. So currently, though, on your path of where God has had you, you are now the founder of LED Advisory. So what is that and why is that your current assignment?
Kimberly Wright: My husband and I became accidental business owners back in 2000. He works in the wireless telecommunications industry, has since 1995. And, but in 2000, to keep the role he had, we had to start an LLC, and so he could stay within that company. And it was an odd thing. But so that forced us to go to our tax attorney and say, "Hey, we have to set up a company." And we didn't even know. He was like "what do you wanna name it?" And we're like, "We don't know." So we named it Exodus because we're like "the Israelites were wandering around the desert and they didn't know what they were doing, and we don't know what we're doing."
Kimberly Wright: So that's our thinking to be just sitting there in the attorney's office. But over the course of the years, he went back to being a W-2 in that industry, but we maintained Exodus, and I worked through Exodus doing speaking and contract work and so forth. And then the end of 2004, we moved to a different CPA, and he says to me, and, I'd been working through Exodus and building this company for several years, and it was kinda my baby too, and he said, "You need to pull all of your business out of Exodus because we have other business in Exodus."
Kimberly Wright: And he said, "You have to start, your own umbrella." And I'm like, "Oh, man." And I was heartbroken for several months. But it gave me an opportunity to say, "What does this look like going forward?" And so that's how LED Advisory was born for leverage, empower, and dream, and it is meant specifically for Christian working women. That's who I had in mind, even though I do serve, teams in the marketplace.
Kimberly Wright: But that was my heart. And I made my primary branding color purple in honor of Lydia's business. So that's kinda how LED Advisory came to be. So even though it was birthed in 2005, the work's been there for a long time, but it's relatively new in the world, I guess you could say.
Martha: Yeah. That's so good. Okay. So you wrote this book, and I'm gonna hold it up, Perspective for the Christian Working Woman: Narrowing the Gap Between Your Perceptions and God's Truth. So where did the idea for this book come from?
Kimberly Wright: That book has been cooking for a long time, so I won't lie. So I quoted in my last book, called Believing Out Loud, I quoted something my husband said, and he said "People's perceptions are their reality."
Kimberly Wright: Now, he didn't coin that phrase. But that was really the first time that I had heard it, and it resonated with me. And I could not stop thinking about it. And so then when I would find myself working in teams, and that was back in 2012. And so when I would be working with different teams, I would start observing how we're all approaching tasks differently or communication, and where there would be misunderstandings, and I could see it between these two people.
Kimberly Wright: And I was like, "Oh, everybody has their own perspectives," and so you think about a team in an organization, and all of us are bringing our experiences, our baggage, our wounds, our great experiences, our confidence, our lack of confidence, all of that through our own lens, our own perspectives. And then we're supposed to be excellent communicators and effective strategists and collaborators and all these things.
Kimberly Wright: And so that's where culture can, really get wonky. And I, about 2020 I think it was towards the end of COVID, I was asked to speak at a Christian women's luncheon. And I'd been putting down notes about all this stuff for years but never did anything with it. And at that luncheon, I thought, "I'm gonna just talk about this topic."
Kimberly Wright: And it was the first time that I'd ever brought it up, so I did a 30-minute talk about perceptions and how they impact a woman's approach to leadership and all these types of things, and the response was amazing. And one businesswoman I didn't know very well at the time, she was an owner, but respected her greatly, and she's now a client. She came up to me afterwards, and it's the first time we'd ever talked, and she said, "I need more of that. That's incredible. I need more of that."
Kimberly Wright: And I was like, "Okay. I think, Lord, I think we're onto something here." And so it continued to evolve until I wrote an entire curriculum material called Perception Leadership with the framework of it. And so having that framework, I was able to go back in there and pull out materials for this book, and add the biblical context and the stories and the scriptures that, everything ties together so beautifully because God is just that perfect and amazing.
Jim: Let me, let me get personal with you for a minute. What is the biggest... I'm gonna ask you a personal question. I'm not gonna get personal. What is the biggest perception that God had to point out the truth about in your own life?
Kimberly Wright: Wow. Okay. So that is a really good question, and it's, the timing of that is so ironic. So that's something that God has actually been working on with me recently, and it ties into the buzzword lately of "visibility."
Kimberly Wright: So I think Martha might know this. We've shared lots of stories, but I grew up in... a lot of trauma happened in my life and my mom was an only survivor of a mass shooting. My parents were divorced, and in our little town back then, nobody was divorced. And and then my mom had multiple marriages.
Kimberly Wright: My dad had left and went off and created a whole other family. So I grew up around the perception that I just wanted to blend in and be like everybody else. I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to just mix with the crowd. Because I didn't wanna be that person that people were talking about that had all those labels on it of, "Oh, she's the one that..."
Kimberly Wright: My grandpa had taken me to a basketball game, and I came out and he'd had a heart attack, so I had to run in for help. So I stopped an entire basketball tournament when I was 10 years old to seek help and call for doctors and, and he passed away and and that was, like, a couple years before my mom was shot.
Kimberly Wright: So there was all those things that happened. And so God has really been working on me about especially with this book, of, "I've given you a message, but you can't be invisible with it." That you have to be willing to share and be visible to other people, and you can't always blend in. And so that's- That is the biggest bunch of information and vulnerability. I don't know if you were going that- for that. But you got the whole story.
Martha: Yeah.
Jim: That's great. Appreciate you sharing it.
Martha: That is really awesome. So in my intro, I talked with, Jim, do you know what I was talking about when I said the black and blue dress versus gold and white dress?
Jim: No. Because I didn't get a chance to read the book. You did this time.
Martha: So this was a kind of a viral story- ... on social media, probably even the news, 'cause I know people wrote articles, like explaining it, and this is how Kimberly sets up her book at the very beginning, is like the #dressgate. So talk about that for a minute, just to get everybody up to speed, because it really is a great way to realize how different our perspectives can be.
Kimberly Wright: Yeah. So in 2015, it was one of the first times the phrase was coined, "That broke the internet." Something broke the internet, and it was this dress, and it started in Scotland. A mother of the bride took a picture of this dress that she thought was pretty and wanted to wear to the wedding, and the daughter came back from, and said, "No, you can't wear white to the wedding." And the mom was like, " this isn't white. It's black and blue." And the daughter's like, "No, that's white and gold."
Kimberly Wright: And so they were looking at the same picture, but they were seeing different things. And so then they took it to social media and said, "Okay, she thinks this is black and gold. She thinks this is, or black and blue, but she thinks this is white and gold. What do you see?" And so everybody, it just started spreading, and it literally went viral.
Kimberly Wright: And within 24 hours, it had 4 million tweets. Politicians, celebrities were chiming in on this dress. BuzzFeed wrote an article about it. 37 million readers read that article. There was studies done in neuroscience and vision science about this dress, and the thing is, from what I could find of all the research, approximately 76% of the world believed this dress is white and gold. I see white and gold when I look at that dress. The dress is actually black and blue. And so this small portion of people saw the dress as it actually is.
Martha: The picture isn't in the book, I don't think. I had to look it... You have to look it up online. And so it's a fascinating way to set up this whole idea of perspective because there's truth, like of what it actually is, but you can test for yourself that you may not see it as the truth. So how did that play into then setting up the book?
Kimberly Wright: So I pose the question because, I saw that with my own eyes. Even to this day, knowing the right answer, I still see white and gold.
Jim: I'm- You could probably get counseling for that, but I'm just saying but what color did you see?
Martha: I'm trying to remember now, because you see both when they're next to each...
Jim: like- How could a black and blue dress be seen as white and gold?
Martha: It has to do with daylight. I will send it to you. It has to do with reflection. Yes. I'll show it to him after the show. We'll put the link in there for everybody too to make it easy.
Kimberly Wright: Absolutely. I will, i'll send you a picture of it, because you do have to see it. I recently, it was this year, but when I launched a new one of my coaching groups, I showed them the dress. And like seven of us saw white and gold, and one person saw black and blue, and I hadn't told them the right answer yet.
Kimberly Wright: And this one lady, Amy, she was like, "I feel like I'm being gaslit." And she was so sure that she saw black and blue. And she was the only one that was right of all of us. Isn't that crazy? So yeah. But the point of it is our perceptions is basically the lens through which we view things and which we interpret information and understand things.
Kimberly Wright: And, I'm walking around living my life believing this dress is one color when it's another color. And it's the color of a dress, so technically it's not a big deal. But what if I'm believing something wholeheartedly and basing decisions on it-
Martha: Yeah ...
Kimberly Wright: that is actually incorrect. It's an incorrect perception.
Martha: And so Jim's looking it up right now. But it's really hard because they're showing both, and so of course you see both. So you'll have to dig into it a little bit later.
Martha: But he's gonna start shopping for a dress for me, after that. It's just great 'cause it really does just set up the whole idea of perspective and how that applies. Jim, you can jump in at any time.
Jim: I just, it is obvious. I'm a married guy of over 40 years. It's obvious. Sometimes Martha and I can walk into the same room and she sees something different than I see. Or I may say something I think is funny, which I'm always trying to do, and she may not think it's funny. But she's wrong. But it was funny. It was meant to be funny at least.
Jim: But the, so that perspective thing is, the way men and women look at things. The perspectives are so different. The way believers and non-believers look at things is so different. This perspective area is, how do we make sure that we always have the right perspective?
Kimberly Wright: That's the million-dollar question, 100%.
Jim: That doesn't go very far anymore. Can it be a $10 million question? 'Cause a million bucks just doesn't go very far anymore.
Kimberly Wright: This is true. Inflation, I'll give you that. But it is the pinnacle question, and the answer is always scripture. Where again, as you said, Christians and non-Christians have different perspectives, but that's how we have different, not so many different denominations is the, Christians and Christians viewing and interpreting something different in scripture.
Kimberly Wright: And so that's where we really have to lean in and study and learn the scripture and have a relationship, a personal relationship with Jesus, and develop our discernment and ask for wisdom, and at the end of the day, make the decision that we feel God is leading us to, or, whatever it is.
Kimberly Wright: That's always gonna be what should be reality is God's truth. But we're tainted with all of the other things over here, our baggage, what the world is saying, social media, others' opinions. And that's why Romans tells us to renew our minds daily because God knew even pre-social media that we were gonna have this influx of information, Satan's attacks, experiences like I had as a child that grew up with me and impacted how I saw myself and my identity.
Kimberly Wright: And so there's always those variables. But at the end of the day, we have to rely on Christ, and I feel like that a lot of people think that's just an oversimplification. "That's too easy," or, "There has to be something more glamorous than that," and it's not. God is the truth. His word is truth.
Martha: That's so good, and I wanna talk about that in a little bit 'cause you do an excellent job of putting scripture throughout this book. There is no denying where the foundation comes from. But when I... You can hold up the book.
Jim: What, what book are we talking about?
Martha: Kimberly Wright's new book, Perspective. (Jim and Martha showing the book on screen)Gonna do a little Vanna thing here. So in my reference for your book, I mentioned that you touched pretty much every area of my life within all of the chapters, and... (talking to Jim) you went too far. 'Cause I wanted, I wrote this down. I mentioned that you talked about unhealed wounds. You talked to words, to gender differences, and rest, among many other things. Why do you think that women struggle with perspective in so many different areas?
Kimberly Wright: One, it's all of our experiences, and that's how our identity is actually created is from repeated experiences. So for example, try to keep this quick, but think of let's say there's a toddler, three years old, and she has a new baby brother.
Kimberly Wright: And so her mom's sitting on the couch holding baby brother, and she asks the little girl, "Hey, could you get me the wet wipes?" Little girl goes and gets the wet wipes, brings them to mom, and mom says, "Oh, you're such a good helper. Thank you." And just lavishes her with love. And then the next day, mom's sitting on the couch with baby brother.
Kimberly Wright: "Oh, I dropped his pacifier. Can you go get me..." Little girl goes and gets it, comes back, gives it to mom. "Oh, thank you. You're the best little helper. Thank you." I'm... and just loves and appreciates her daughter. Then over time, the little girl's perceiving even at that young age of, "Oh, when I help mom, she's really happy with me."
Kimberly Wright: And, "Oh, when mom's sitting on the couch, she needs stuff." And so she'll like just voluntarily go grab something, a pacifier even without mom asking and say, "Here, do you need this? I'm your good helper." Because she's starting to see herself through these repeated experiences. That's her perceptions.
Kimberly Wright: And then as we grow up, we start having our identity based on all those things, and eventually when we reach our teens and the ability to think and process, our brain's maturing a little more, our identity starts filtering using our perceptions to reinforce what we believe about our identity.
Kimberly Wright: And what happens though as we grow and as women, depending on experiences like that or trauma or unhealed wounds, words people say to us, we start allowing that to be the, a basis of our worth, our strengths. So instead of, like the, the strength of being a helper or being someone who does something well, all of a sudden now it's like I have to prove myself.
Kimberly Wright: I ha- my value is tied to that strength. Whereas God sets our value. Our identity is already created. Our worth is already created in him, and our strengths are the evidence. They flow from that. But we are so easily we turn it into a strength-based identity instead. And so our strengths, they don't define our value.
Kimberly Wright: Our titles, our accomplishments, our roles, our value's already been determined, and so they're not, that's - our strengths aren't what define it. That's what flows from our identity. And so I think that's where we struggle so much, is twisting those around.
Martha: Yeah, for sure.
Jim: Perspectives are literally, as you talked with this dress thing, which is ridiculous, I get it. But you can walk into a room and go, that room.. Martha and I argue about this all the time. It's like, "That's a blue-green." She goes, "That is green all day long," or, "That is blue all..." It's perspectives.
Jim: Are there specific areas for women that you think they have the hardest time dealing with? Specific perspectives. You just talked about identity. I'm guessing that's number one, but maybe there's a number two. Is there, as you're dealing with women, do you see a pattern of perspectives that they really struggle with?
Kimberly Wright: I think one of the most common that I have heard other than, you keep peeling that onion, it goes back to the identity, is that comparison trap. And it isn't that they are comparing themselves to other women and wanting to put other women down. It's, they're trying to find the measuring stick, and then they're seeing just, the outside version, the polished version.
Kimberly Wright: And so they start saying, "I can't keep up," or, "I'm behind," or, "I should be further along in career," or, "My kids should be better dressed or better behaved," or all the, the shouldas that we do on ourselves. And a lot of that stems from us looking around for that measuring stick and comparing ourselves to other women.
Kimberly Wright: And then I think the other thing is what we touched on earlier, is when we are raised in a church, and depending on our denomination, we really struggle with, where do I fit in the workplace? If they were raised in a denomination where women are not allowed to lead or to have a strong voice or a role, then they, that kinda manifests itself within the workplace.
Kimberly Wright: They'll show up more timid, less confident. They'll submit to ideas and directions that they know internally, "I don't think this is best for the team or the organization", but instead of sharing a, a really great, option, they just hold it in. And they're missing opportunities to make a difference in the workplace.
Martha: It reminds me, Jim, you say this often to people, they're like, " we expect non-believers to be and act like believers." And so even that perspective in our life changes everything when you, y- you get rid of that expectation, in a sense.
Martha: Kimberly, you have some, th- there's... Let me just say, there are so many great chapters in your book, and what I love about it is that it is, I don't know if digestible is a word, it, you're a great writer, you're easy to read. It's not overwhelming, yet it's convicting, which it should be, right? It, this is about growing and learning from it.
Jim: I'm totally not gonna read that book now.
Martha: Okay. W- why? '
Jim: Cause you said it was convicting.
(laughter)
Martha: Oh. But first of all, I wanna mention, you actually have a downloadable study guide, right? That goes with it.
Kimberly Wright: I do, absolutely.
Jim: We should put a link on that with the show notes ...
Martha: that's a great idea, Jim. And you know there's a lot of ways that people can go through and process your book. But I wanted to just highlight a couple of the themes that you touch on and why perspective is so important. Maybe talk about prayer just for a moment.
Kimberly Wright: Again, it goes back to scripture and it - we want things to be harder than they are. We want them to be more glamorous or some secret sauce, and prayer is just conversation with God and building that relationship with him. But a lot of times we avoid or "Oh, I don't have time to pray this morning" because we think we have to be in a certain chair or on our knees or in a certain place.
Kimberly Wright: And yes, it's important to take time to really just be able to focus, but that's the beauty of God is we take him with us, and we can be communicating with him all of the time. And sometimes the most honest prayers are those ones that are just born out of desperation and a, "Help me, Lord, I don't know how I'm gonna get through this," or, "I don't know how I'm gonna show up in this meeting knowing that everyone disagrees with me," or whatever it looks like, family, professionally.
Kimberly Wright: And so I think, we have to stay connected with God, and we have to know his word and speak his word. His word never returns void. And he is so faithful. And when we are in strong communication with God, even his no's are okay, to us because we're like, "Okay, then that means he knows something I don't know." But when, we're just that, every occasional prayer or we're avoiding God because we feel like we have to have everything together and can't bring our shame and all the things to, to God, feeling like we have to clean it up first, that's not how he works.
Kimberly Wright: And so people really - I want so many people to know that, and I know that there's so many women already that have read this that, are Christians, they love God, but they haven't been in church in 10 years. And so I want, I wanted to emphasize the importance of prayer and that communication with God.
Martha: That's so good. And we could dive into each one of the topics, but we don't have time for that.
Jim: But I wanna ask a question.
Martha: Okay, go ahead.
Jim: Do I ... Is it okay?
Martha: Yeah.
Jim: All right. Rest. Perspectives on rest. Speaking from a perspective of a man who's married to a woman who doesn't understand the word, or the s-
Martha: That's your perspective anyway.
Jim: That is my ... Yeah. Documented in several books, by the way. Why is it... I don't know, I know a lot of women, they're like Energizer bunnies, they never sit still. This rest perspective. God has a very specific perspective on rest. Why do we have such a hard time adopting God's perspective?
Kimberly Wright: I think a lot of it goes back to when we were talking about strength-based identity, is we feel like if we're not, if we're the performer, if we need that recognition in work or something, and then when somebody else gets recognized, we feel "Okay, maybe I'm not as valuable," that if I have to keep producing. I can't celebrate my accomplishments, I can't rest on my accomplishments, I have to keep going.
Kimberly Wright: That interferes with the commandment of rest. A lot of us view rest as a reward, not a requirement, and God modeled it for us. He didn't need rest, but He knew that we would, and He modeled it for us. He made it a commandment, and He continually, Jesus modeled it. Even - no one was busier than Jesus. Nobody had more of a crunch time than He did. And yet He still made time to go away alone to talk to His Father, and that was His time of rest.
Kimberly Wright: And but we're still looking at it as a reward instead of a requirement that fuels us creatively. And I think also a lot of people they de- they define rest differently. For some people, rest is laying on the couch and watching TV. For me, a lot of times rest is, piddling in my flower bed and pulling weeds and stuff. It's just something different than what I've been working on. So yeah, so rest, means different things.
Martha: See, I didn't pay her to say that. She just did. It is true. I tell him all the time. I'm like, "To me, this is not work. This is... It's grounding. It's time when, in nature. It's all those things." But it can become something else. That is a good thing.
Jim: Let's just talk about it. There's something else. Martha has flower gardens this year. How many flower gardens do you have?
Martha: A lot.
Jim: But have they taken over your life?
Martha: Yeah.
Jim: Okay, there you go. So they can be gone. But they're incredible. They're beautiful. We have incredible flower gardens-
Martha: That's okay ...
Jim: all over the city.
Martha: Yes.
Jim: Okay.
Martha: All right. So Kimberly, when a woman reads your book, Perspective for the Christian Working Woman, what are you hoping that they get? What is the heart of what you're wanting them to get from it?
Kimberly Wright: First and foremost with any of the books that I have written, my heart is always that they draw closer to God, that they see their own need for God. And it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with them. That's how we are created. We have a desperate need for God in our lives and to be first place in our lives. And so I want that always to point back to him. But I want them also, like you said earlier, I want them to be challenged because that, I feel like that's where God has called me, is, I wanna be an encourager.
Kimberly Wright: I wanna be the person that's cheering you on and helping you to be better. But to help you be better is sometimes speaking truth in love. And when I see things that I struggle with and that other women struggle with, I know that it's not just us, that there's a whole world of us out there that have a lot of the same challenges.
Kimberly Wright: And so I hope that they see that they're not alone in what they're struggling with, but there are other ways to look at it. And I'm not, I can't tell them how, what their perspective should be, that's God's job, but only to question their perspectives and how they're perceiving things and interpreting things that happen to them.
Martha: That's awesome. Kimberly Wright, thank you so much for being our guest today and sharing your book with us and your heart behind it. And I just encourage all of our listeners to get themselves a copy and check it out for themselves and make sure that you are living in the perspective that God gave you.
Jim: And don't forget, all the links will be in the show notes, along with the link to the downloadable study guide for Perspectives, right? Yes. Good. We switched roles pretty good th- today then, didn't we?
Martha: Good job.
Jim: Kimberly, thank you so much. Thank you both so much. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, and our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.